Good Examples of Digital Creativity and Media Usage including online advertising, web sites and search marketing. Compiled by Dan Calladine, Aegis Media - dan.calladine@aemedia.com All views expressed are my own.
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Recently I've come across an excellent example of paid promotion on blogs that's done correctly.
A current campaign for Pizza Hut on a number of UK parenting blogs takes the theme 'free activities' and gets the bloggers to write about what they did over the summer with their kids for free, while mentioning the Pizza Hut Kids Go Free promotion.
I really like this because it's clearly listed in all cases as a sponsored post, so it's very open and above board, the bloggers have been given a genuine reason to write, the subject matter is relevant to the blogs, and it's also perfect for the target audience.
As far as I can work out this was done through eBuzzing, but if you know different let me know!
As a follow up (possibly) to this summer's World Cup promo, CNN has created a special service to promote healthy eating and farmers' markets around the world.
Check in at a farmers' market - over 10,000 are covered around the world apparently - and you get access to special offers at the market, in some cases.
Groupon is a local, social, couponing company. Groupon members join a local email list, then get sent two offers per day, local to them. The offers can only be bought for 24 hours, and are generally limited to one or two per buyer. Offers only go live when a certain minimum number of people buy, but in the vast majority of cases they seem to sell very well. Users are encouraged to share the offers on social sites, to encourage friends to buy as well. The idea isn't unique to Groupon, as it's been done in China for a few years, but Groupon are making the most headway in the West.
Groupon is one of those companies that have got big pretty quietly. Groupon now boasts over 13 million members, growing at a million a week, so it's far larger than Foursquare, but with much less publicity.
I joined the London email list when it launched, and since then have bought a couple of the vouchers.
It works very well. Some merchants say they regret using it (this being the most high profile example) but in far more cases the merchants seem to be delighted.
(The highest profile success was this promotion for Gap - showing that large companies can use it too - which sold 440,000, generating $11m in revenue, split between Gap and Groupon)
Groupon have also used merchants to create tutorial videos to show how to get the best out of the service:
The main bits of advice I'd give to someone doing this would be:
1 - Decide what you want out of it, and be sure you know why you are doing it
2 - Structure the deal to these aims - if you want people to sample what you do, skew the offer towards a sample
3 - Structure the financials to what you can afford to do as a promotion
4 - Set up a measurement framework so that you can count coupon redemptions etc
5 - Limit the level of coupons available, and set an expiry date
6 - Be ready for when people come in to redeem - offer the best customer service, and try to up-sell
7 - Similarly be very clear on ts and cs - don't allow more than one coupon per offer, be very rigid on expiry dates etc
8 - Offer another loyalty offer when people are at your location - e.g. buy 4, get one free
9 - Measure the effect, based on redemption, uptake of other offers, customer response and so on
10 - Go to 1, and repeat.
As a customer there are a few things that they can do to improve - for example I don't want to receive teeth whitening offers - but this is definitely a new media and social media success story.
This is another example of brands using the location based 'checkin' as a promotion mechanism.
If you visit McDonalds in the US & checkin with Brightkite you get the 'Easy' badge. Checkin 5 times and you get to level 2, which gives you a $5 off voucher in McDonalds if you pay with Visa. It's limited to the first 500 users who qualify. Limiting offers is pretty normal with these sorts of deals; you need to be able to prevent it getting out of hand.
Yesterday I wrote about the multiple partnerships that Weezer had done to promote their new album, including naming it after the clothing company Hurley.
Now Gorillaz have done a deal with Microsoft to help promote the new IE9.
Weezer's new album Hurley came out yesterday, and they seem to have pulled pretty much every trick in the book to promote it.
For example:
Micro-celebries - they're appearing in the videos of over 10 YouTube celebries, including Hot For Words (below) in a stunt previously pulled by Carls Jr. Full list for Weezer here.
Partnerships - there are several of these.
The main one is with the clothing company Hurley, who have had the album named after them (a first, as far as I know), and created a special range of clothes to celebrate the band. Tied to this, Weezer have parterned with the store Pacsun to sell the clothes, plus the album was on sale through Pacsun a day early.
They have also partnered with Axe (Lynx in the UK) to arrange a series of secret gigs. You need to add Axe on Facebook or twitter to find out the dates, locations, and how to get tickets. Here's the tweet that tells you how to get tickets:
Go 2 Amoeba Music (WSunset/Cahuenga) at 6pm &find dude outside in black AXE top for tix 2the 9/21 Weezer @AXE Music OneNightOnly show! – JWA
They have partnered with Amazon - enter the code PICKDEAL when you checkout at Amazon MP3 (US only) and get a discount on the album
& finally they've partnered with the Jackass team - the video (below) for the new single doubles as a promo for the new film Jackass 3D.
It'll be interesting to see how the album sells, and also whether the fans accept this pretty merciless level of selling themselves
Last night, without warning, twitter started to roll out a new version of the site - as they put it in their blog 'a better twitter'.
I haven't got it yet - it's only available to a few users in the US so far - but from the description and video they have made it a lot more engaging and 'rich' than before. It looks more like one of the apps like Tweetdeck, and can suck in other media like pictures and videos, in the way that Flipboard does.
These are the enhancements:
"New design. The site has a cleaner timeline and a rich details pane that instantly adds more impact to individual Tweets while still maintaining the simplicity of the timeline. And, experience infinite scroll -- you no longer have to click “more” to view additional Tweets. Media. Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube. Related content. When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: replies, other Tweets by that user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more. Mini profiles. Click a username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets."
While I don't think that there was anything wrong with the existing twitter, this will make it far more like Facebook, and far more accessible to more people. Twitter always was an acquired taste - it took me more than a year to acquire it after I signed up - but this will speed their growth over the 200 million and beyond.
It will bring more people back to the site and away from the apps. It will also make it far more influential, and open to brands and advertising, although I certainly don't expect twitter to adopt standard ad units like banners.
For example here's the show for Starbucks, presented by George Lamb and Marc Hughes, featuring double shots (geddit) in the form of two tracks by the same album, or two artists who've been in two different bands (today the choice is between Eric Clapton and Paul Weller).
Shop-Placing is the opposite of shoplifting - you put things into shops rather than take them out.
Banksy did it in 2006 with his version of Paris Hilton's album, and now DJ Shadow has done it to promote his new music. He's been placing place vinyl 7" records with tracks on in cult record shops near to where he'll be playing gigs.
""The idea is 'shop-placing; it's the opposite of shoplifting. You go into a store, and leave your record in the racks to be discovered later. It's not about being cute, it's about passing the music along in the most unobtrusive way possible. No hype, no shouting, no shot-in-the-void online campaign. Just, ‘Here you go…I’m glad you found it, and I hope you enjoy it.’ I’d rather give away free vinyl than a download, because to me, downloads are so impersonal and soulless.”"
There's a great interview in yesterday's Financial Times Magazine with Brian Message, one of Radiohead's managers, and part of the music company ATC Management, who help bands to make money in the digital age.
Everyone knows about "doing a Radiohead" and it was pretty much a one-off stunt; "doing a Faithless" would probably be appropriate for more bands:
"The Dance is Faithless’s first post-Sony album. Although Faithless didn’t copy In Rainbows’ honesty-box payment scheme, Radiohead’s example was fundamental to the band’s decision not to seek another record deal. “I remember thinking, we’re not as big as Radiohead but we’re big enough to do what they’ve done. We have a big enough fanbase, we can tour places, we sell enough records that we can really control our own destiny.”
Indeed, Armstrong estimates the band will earn more from The Dance than any of their earlier albums. At a major label, a top act gets about 40 per cent of the price of each album in royalties and publishing rights (after repaying their advance). This time around, Faithless get everything bar the retailers’ cut.
In the UK, The Dance is being sold exclusively for a year by iTunes and Tesco. Fiat paid for their latest single’s video and have named a limited run of cars after the song. Music snobs deride Tesco CD purchasers as mindless consumers reaching automatically for the nearest Susan Boyle; a Fiat midrange saloon is a long way from hipsville. Armstrong, however, is unrepentant. “I never want to compromise the music, but once it’s made I want everyone to hear it, because obviously I think it’s brilliant. I’ve always had that philosophy: use every opportunity to get your music to people.”"
Here's the Fiat ad:
One of their other bands is the much newer Band of Skulls. Check out their website for examples of the sorts of things they're doing to promote them.
